Claim: A 20-month-old boy named Brayden Hembree is lying in a coma in a South Carolina hospital.

Status:Not any more.

Example:[Collected on the Internet, 2000]

EMERGENCY PRAYER REQUEST
PLEASE READ, PRAY, THEN FORWARD.

Prayers are needed for Braedon Hembree and his family.

Everyone with a large mailing list, please forward.

I am writing to you now to ask for your help. I do not really know how to start a prayer chain, but we need a
miracle.

Braedon is just a 20-month-old baby boy in Clinton, South Carolina. A few weeks ago his parents took him to Laurens County Hospital with double pneumonia (both lungs). The next night he was transferred to Greenville Memorial Pediatric Intensive Care Unit in critical condition. He is in a "coma-like" state and on a respirator battling viral pneumonia. Braedon is only 20 months old and very weak. He is recognizing voices, as his heart rate goes up when they sing/talk to him, it especially got stronger when his big sister, Krista, talked with him. The doctor says this is good and this makes him think that Braedon's brain is doing fine. However, the doctors are perplexed by the type of viral pneumonia he is fighting. There is a hole in his lung that may require surgery.

Braedon, has recently taken a turn for the worse. His blood pressure is extremely high, leading the doctors to think he is having seizures or strokes. He now has 18 chest tubes and lots of scar tissue building in his lungs. The right lung has no healthy tissue at all but at this point he would not survive a lung transplant. He is still on life
support and may be on it for a long time. The family appreciates all your prayers and they continue to have lots of hope for improvement. I am told the family's faith is such that they are expecting a miracle soon.

Be a part of that miracle. The power of prayer is great. I ask for your prayers on their behalf. Please pray for Braedon's healing and for strength and comfort for his family. He is only 20 months old. I am asking you to send this letter, or copies of it, to everybody you can think of that will pray for Braedon. Please also take his name to your church and church groups and ask others to pray for his healing.

Many thanks and may God bless each one of you who cares enough to pray for a little boy's life. I am asking that each and every one of you please forward this on to everyone that you know. Please take time to do this right now.

God Bless You,

PLEASE READ, PRAY, THEN FORWARD.
EMERGENCY PRAYER REQUEST

Dr. J. Matthew Durham
102 Ellis Ave
Abbeville, SC 29620
864-459-4173

Origins: In February 2000, Brayden Banks Hembree, a young boy just short of his second birthday, lay in a coma at Greenville Memorial Hospital in South Carolina, gravely ill from a bout with viral pneumonia. At that time, a family friend sent out the above-quoted plea for prayers to help young Brayden through his ordeal.

According to a (no longer active) web site put together by Brayden's mother, Brayden was admitted to the Laurens County Hospital in Clinton, South Carolina, on 19 February 2000 suffering from a high fever which antibiotics had failed to clear up, then transferred to Greenville Memorial Hospital, where he was diagnosed with a severe case of bilateral pneumonia and placed in the pediatric ICU. Although Brayden's condition initially showed signs of improvement, a week into his hospitalization he sustained lung damage and was placed on life support. His prognosis seemed bleak.

After the passage of another week, however, Brayden began to steadily improve. By 16 March 2000 (coincidentally the date of his second birthday) doctors were able to remove him from life support, and he was discharged from the hospital in good condition six days later.

As of the last update posted by his mother in 2003, Brayden was a healthy, happy three-year-old who showed no signs of the brain damage doctors feared he might have suffered.

To all involved, Brayden's recovery was nothing short of miraculous. Mission accomplished.